Even Donald J. Trump’s own advisors refused to defend the former president’s dinner at Mar-a-Lago early last week with white supremacist and hard-right activist Nick Fuentes, with one describing it as “horrible” and another “totally awful” according to The Washington Post. Predictably, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a onetime advisor to Trump himself and now potential challenger for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination said the “attention hungry” ex-prez “showed lack of judgment,” Axiosreports.

Hip-hop artist Ye (formerly Kanye West) brought Fuentes to dinner with Trump before Thanksgiving. Trump said he had only planned to have dinner with (anti-semite) Ye according to WaPo.

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By Stephen Macaulay

Jesse—Big Daddy—Unruh, California politician during the 1950s, ‘60s, ‘70s and, yes, ‘80s, famously said: “Money is the mother’s milk of politics.”

He also said regarding lobbyists, “"If you can't eat their food, drink their booze, screw their women and then vote against them you've got no business being up here.”

So the question is whether Unruh was a cynic or a realist. I’ll go for the second choice.

Even in cases where there is what is generally accepted “normal” behavior by the men and women who hold higher office, in point of fact their insatiable need for money to keep the wheels of their careers well oiled often puts them in positions wherein temptation is at an intensity that most of us will never experience.

And when you have the Trump Family, things are really off the rails.

What is surprising is the number of individuals and corporations Team Trump have, to put it indelicately, screwed. Whether it was contractors who didn’t get paid or hotels that had to send invoices to a collection agency, the Trumps, led by the paterfamilias, have had a thing for other people’s money. Getting into the Oval Office was hitting the jackpot. Presidents don’t need to carry wallets.

One reason why we have heard ad nauseum about how the election was stolen, rigged, etc., about how he “won in a landslide,” probably has more than a little something to do with dead presidents—and I don’t mean Bush 41, Reagan, Johnson, etc.—than any concern with the well-being of the polity.

Remember those tax returns we’ve only seen by fits and starts? Or the return that showed Trump paid $750 in taxes in 2017?

Odds are good that Trump is going to realize that he’s going to make more money being out of office than would back in office (remember that he is 74 and although his parents lived long lives — his father to 93 and his mother to 88 — according to the Social Security actuarial table he has an average 11.76 years left, so he might as well optimize his earnings, such as they may be). What about the kids? Don Jr., Eric, Ivanka? Might they try a run? Anything is possible, but fealty seems to be to Senior, and there is less likelihood that they could pull it off with the bold bluster of the Old Man. And if there is a — and I use this term technically — a shit-storm of lawsuits that come raining down on Trump, the brand is going to be largely besmirched for all but the most dedicated, so the money won’t come raining with it.

So if not Trump, then who? Marco Rubio — a.k.a., “Lil’ Marco” — will probably give it another run. And Mike Pence hasn’t exactly covered himself in glory during his tenure in the White House, nor endeared himself to the Base, so there doesn’t seem to be a path for him to take, so odds aren’t good there. (And that second Unruh quote would undoubtedly be too upsetting to him to contemplate.)

It could be that the Republicans try to do a bit of a reset and go for a more “normal” Ben Sasse — although it should be noted that while Nebraska has been a reliably Republican state, in the last presidential, for only the second time in its history, it awarded one of its five electoral votes to someone else, in this case, Joe Biden.

It should not be forgotten that before the chairman and CEO — then, as now — of The Trump Organization won the Republican nomination, there were Rubio, John Kasich, Ted Cruz, Ben Carson, Jeb Bush, Jim Gilmore, Chris Christie, Carly Fiorina, Rick Santorum, Rand Paul, Mike Huckabee, George Pataki, Lindsey Graham, Bobby Jindal, Scott Walker, and Rick Perry all in the game at one point.

Politics is a nasty game and corporations play hard ball. Make no mistake: they’re not going to put their efforts behind people supported by grown-ups who wear Viking garb — and I don’t mean the Minnesota team — when it isn’t Halloween.

Follow the money.

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By Nic Woods

Some important members of the Trump administration – including Donald J. Trump himself – are in denial over last week’s election result and so America must suffer the consequences of rejecting four more years of him. 

In just one 24-hour post-election news cycle the week after former Vice President Biden was declared winner:

• News organizations had to cover not one, but two, press conferences where ranking administration officials acted like an election never happened, much less that their boss lost.

• Attorney General William Barr handed to Justice department prosecutors the authority to investigate claims of voter fraud.

• Emily Murphy, head of the General Services Administration, refused to sign papers to release to Biden $6.3 million of $10 million set aside for his transition because it’s unclear to her who had won.

•Federal agencies have been told to proceed with Trump’s fiscal 2022 budget.

•Trump fired Defense Secretary Mark Esper and demoted Federal Energy Regulatory Committee Chairman Neil Chatterjee in a spree of administration figures deemed not sufficiently loyal. 

•Installed Mike Ellis as general counsel to the National Security Agency, making him more difficult to fire (except Trump may not remember issuing an executive order that would, in fact, make him easier to fire).

There are many more examples that seem like random individual meltdowns, but they all matter – they are as complex a power play the Trump administration can muster in its three-pronged strategy, along with fighting math in the courts and working up the base with baseless claims of voter fraud.

This strategy – using the war on election math to hinder Biden’s transition as much as bureaucratically possible – is what is left if the other two don’t work and it offers valuable insight into the administration and what they really think of their opponent, Joe Biden.

About this time four years ago. Chris Christie, then the governor of New Jersey and a late-to-the-bandwagon Trump supporter, volunteered for the thankless task of heading the transition team of the newly elected Donald J. Trump. 

It was an offer Trump initially rejected because, according to Michael Lewis, author of “The Fifth Risk,” which talks about the missed opportunities of Trump’s own transition, “why did anyone need to plan anything before he actually became president?”

Well, Christie said, it was required. 

The Presidential Transition Act, which Congress first passed in 1963 and has been amended four times -- as recently as 2019 – to “recognize the increasing complexities of presidential transitions” was passed to ease and promote the orderly transfer of power because “any disruption occasioned by the transfer of executive power could produce results detrimental to the safety and well-being of the United States and its people.”

The act has key national security implications as well that involve background checks for the high-level members of the new administration so they could be done by the inauguration. The president-elect, under the act, is required to be given a classified summary as soon as possible after the election on national security threats, covert military operations and pending decisions on possible uses of military force. 

So yes, the transition is a big deal and while Trump didn’t know that four years ago, he knows it enough now to try to impede Biden’s administration by pretending there remains some way the courts can shake out a few votes that Joe Biden will just give up and leave. And, if Biden’s stubborn enough to stay, well, he’ll be behind the eight-ball, won’t get anything accomplished and half the country will be against him. 

But Biden isn’t some outsider who doesn’t know how Washington works. He’s spent 36 years in the Senate and ran for president one time more than Trump has. He has connections, including Trump’s predecessor, many of whom are experts in their field. 

Unlike Trump four years ago, Biden knows the act and what he should be getting from it. Biden will listen to the experts, though they are being purged from the Trump administration at a rapid rate. 

Joe Biden also has the resources and knowledge base to still have a functional government and a peaceful transfer of power the third week of January, regardless of what Trump does. 

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